


To Face the Day

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Dressing, Gen, Manservant duties, POV Alternating, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 01, Touch-Starved, soft and warm, touch-starved arthur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21899992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: Waking Arthur and getting him presentable; the biggest job in a manservant's day. And the one thing he actually prides himself on. “Wake up Prince Prat, or I'll have all your cheese.”He has a unique way of doing it, perhaps, but Arthur needs someone who doesn’t fawn.--Merlin is a terrible servant. He's never been taught how to be one... so of course he gets some things wrong. Arthur doesn't really mind.
Relationships: Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 654





	To Face the Day

Merlin is a terrible servant. He is that way because he was never meant to be a servant. He was a farmer, then due to be a physician’s apprentice, and only accidentally did he find himself in the king's household, manservant to the prince.

Still, nothing to be done about that. He picks up what he can where he can. Gwen is a help with the etiquette, and the cook knows all of Arthur's favourites already – he only has to show up at roughly the right time and he will have a plate of suitable foods for the time of day pressed on him within seconds. The guards are useful when he makes a wrong turn, too, and change their patrol route to deliver him where he needs to be.

The cleaning, while grander and more extensive, is not so different to keeping house in Ealdor.

He pulls a tunic and breeches from the wardrobe, laying them carefully over a chair. Waking Arthur and getting him presentable; the biggest job in a manservant's day. And the one thing he actually prides himself on.

“Wake up Prince Prat, or I'll have all your cheese.”

He has a unique way of doing it, perhaps, but Arthur needs someone who doesn’t fawn. He's been getting better, these past few weeks, and while the insults coming Merlin's way are many and varied, there never seems too much real spice in them.

“Mphh.”

Especially first thing.

He pulls back the covers, stifling a smile at the way Arthur simply flips over, burrowing his head in the pillows. He snags a pillow away too, and eventually bleary eyes meet his own. “Breakfast,” he says simply, eyes twinkling, and Arthur squints over his shoulder to where plate and cup are set on the table.

Arthur raises himself – luckily, because if experience has taught him anything it's that he doesn't yet have the muscle mass to haul the Prince very far at all – and pads to his chair. He slumps in it, and Merlin wonders whether he slept particularly badly or very well. One or the other is the only explanation for his uncommon lethargy this morning.

He takes up a brush, and gently smooths through golden hair. There's a certain intimacy to being a manservant. And not just the expected – the dressing, the emptying of the chamber pot. But this. The Prince as a person, real, not much older than himself, not much more than a boy, with his hair sticking every which way and sleep in his eyes. As he would have been at five, or ten, or twelve.

Arthur's hair is soon neat and tidy, but he continues brushing until Arthur pushes away his plate and stands. There are a few apple slices and several bites of cheese left, and he snacks on them as Arthur washes his face. “I got the red tunic,” he says through a mouthful, “as you're meeting the people today. They expect you in red.”

“I look good in red.”

Arthur looks good in most things, but Merlin just looks at him quizzically. “Do you? I thought it brought out your uneven skin tone. But it's the Pendragon colour, so...” he shrugs with a smirk, and dodges the pillow Arthur throws at him. It hits the now-empty plate, which falls with a crash. “You look very princely in red, Sire,” he adds as he rescues it and returns it to the table.

This is his favourite bit, he thinks, as he stands in front of Arthur and gathers his sleep shirt up over his head and down his arms. He lays it to one side, and replaces it with the red tunic. He has rolled up the sleeves for ease, and directs each hand in. Then over Arthur's head, gold popping from the hole and smoothing the fabric down. It's like when he used to help out with the village children, when sickness went around or when their mother was laid up with a new bairn. The steps are familiar, and easy, and he guides Arthur into his breeches, then ties him in. He adds boots, one foot at a time, and loses himself in the lacing and fastening.

“There.” He stands, and brushes his hands across Arthur's shoulders, readjusting the fall of the shirt.

–

He doesn't realise what he's doing, thinks Arthur. It's been the same since the start, the same quiet confidence here that Merlin loses at all other times. The way his hands move smoothly and steadily, following his own internal process as he puts Arthur to rights.

His last manservant had dressed him perfunctorily, if at all, except for the armour which required more attention. Merlin feels more like Hilda, the nanny who raised him, full of soft touches and happy smiles for her charge. The way he brushes Arthur's hair, as if he can't raise a hand himself. The way he holds Arthur's hand while pulling the fabric of his sleeve straight and uncrumpled, before repeating on the other side. The way he settles Arthur's hands on his own shoulders as he kneels to lace his boots, lets Arthur grip softly and feel his warmth through his thin shirts.

It feels like more than a routine, it feels like _care._

“Did Gwen tell you how to dress me?” he asks. Merlin's gaze meets his, and he forces himself not to look away.

“No Sire,” Merlin jokes, “I figured out buckles and buttons all by myself.”

He didn't. Not the way he should have done. How he should lay out the clothes and stand nearby, in case assistance is needed – not press close and use warm hands to guide.

It makes no sense. He is stuck with Merlin because his father decided a reward was needed, and Merlin clearly doesn’t want to be a manservant. He doesn't see it as the honour it is. He is spiky and disrespectful, argumentative and just plain bad at the job.

Except for now, first thing and late at night, when Arthur is sleepy and Merlin turns mellow and the world seems quiet. When he steps so far beyond what he should be doing that he becomes the one thing Arthur looks forward to. Because he may have felt the sting of his father's words, the clash of swords reverberating down his arm, and the heavy thud of shield on shield. But at the end of it all is Merlin, with his soft hands (too soft, for a servant) and jokey asides, soothing away the day and winding him down to sleep.

And sleep he does, because he knows when he wakes, Merlin will be there again. The first face he sees will have sticky out ears and a mop of dark hair that could do with Arthur's brush stroking through it. It will poke and prod him along until his brain starts firing back, and it will grin when insults land. It will grimace and smile and steal half his breakfast, and despite himself, despite the Crown, despite everything –

Merlin, somehow, makes the new day something Arthur can face. He can step out like the Prince he is, tall and steadfast, because no one will know of the soft fingers that have just traced through his hair. No one will know of pillow projectiles and food he leaves on purpose and his manservant holding his hand to help him into a tunic. No one will know of the way Merlin settles his clothes into place with strong, soft sweeps of his palms, and the way Arthur's heart skips in response. Or they way each one of these touches shores him up to face the world.

No one will know.


End file.
